


and the desert blooms

by treescape



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Din adopts a lot of plants, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29243142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treescape/pseuds/treescape
Summary: And that’s how Din finds himself clicking through garden stores on Google Maps about twenty minutes later, because he can’t exactly go home and look his three-year-old in the eye if he abandons the damn plant. The nearest Home Depot is about ten klicks away, but there’s a little flower shop just down the street from Outer Rim Security. The name Desert Blooms gleams up at him from the screen of his desktop, and it gives Din an oddly good feeling.Or, Cara rescues plants from unsuspecting coworkers. Din nurses them back to health. Luke owns a flower shop.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Cara Dune, Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 65
Kudos: 502





	and the desert blooms

**Author's Note:**

> I know nothing about plants, but then, Din doesn’t in this fic either, so I figure it all works out in the end.
> 
> This is for a prompt from @hotsauceonabiscuit on tumblr: "Luke owning a plant shop and Din going in to buy plants just to be near him." I took a few liberties; I hope you don't mind! Thank you so much for the prompt!

Din is carefully reading over a potential contract when Cara bursts into his office, so the first thing he sees is the curve of ceramic making contact with his desk, a flash of dull orange beneath a droop of tattered green leaves.

“I rescued this thing from Mythrol in Accounting,” she says, and he hears her drop into the empty chair on the other side of his desk.

Din finishes his sentence—it looks like a standard enough job, a protection detail at a senator's party—and looks up to meet her gaze. She has an entirely self-satisfied look on her face, the tilt of her mouth set decidedly with mischief, and he has the distinct feeling he’s about to get roped into something he hasn’t really signed up for.

“And?” he asks evenly, though he’s not quite sure he _wants_ to know.

“Look at it,” Cara says, leaning forward to poke accusingly at the leaves, forlorn little wisps that curl in on themselves. “It looks sad, Djarin.”

It _does_ look kind of sad, almost lonely, in a way. He’s not sure what it’s supposed to look like normally, but it’s colour feels muted somehow, like a thing faded by the dark. He feels a little twinge of sympathy for it, because he’d once known too well what it was to be alone, but he’s not exactly sure what Cara expects him to do. Din’s never been one for gardening, so if she’s looking for advice, he’s certainly not the person to ask.

He watches her, deadpan and silent, and waits.

Cara shrugs one shoulder, entirely unimpressed. “You’re good at taking care of things.” When he shoots her a skeptical look, she shoves her chair back and crosses her feet on the edge of his desk, just a few inches away from the bedraggled little plant. “You do a good job with the kid,” she wheedles.

And that’s how Din finds himself clicking through garden stores on Google Maps about twenty minutes later, because he can’t exactly go home and look his three-year-old in the eye if he abandons the damn plant. The nearest Home Depot is about ten klicks away, but there’s a little flower shop just down the street from Outer Rim Security. The name _Desert Blooms_ gleams up at him from the screen of his desktop, and it gives Din an oddly good feeling.

After all, deserts can’t be easy to grow things in; surely anyone who would name their shop such a thing won’t find a simple office plant to be much of a challenge.

Din scribbles down the address on a post-it note, glances at the clock, and figures he might as well take his lunch break now. He tucks the plant under one arm, angling it so that he won’t crush the leaves, and makes his way out of his office and down past reception. He gets a few curious looks, and Fennec does a bit of a double take when he passes her coming into the building, though for _her_ a double take mostly involves the slightest tilt of curiosity to her chin.

Desert Blooms is barely a five minute walk away, a tidy little shop of stone and glass with a sign full of delicate flowers abloom beneath a desert sun, and Din is feeling pretty confident about his decision to come here when a disheveled blond head peeks out from the back room at the sound of the door.

Din very suddenly feels a lot _less_ confident—not in the suitability of the shop, per se, but in his own ability to actually convey the situation. Din’s hardly had the time to _look_ at another man in the past two years, between work and adopting Grogu, but this guy has eyes so blue they could put an autumn sky to shame.

“Hey, welcome to Desert Bl—” the voice is strong and yet light in a way that somehow reminds Din of life and growing things, but it cuts off sharply, as if he’s stumbled over something, and there’s a slight flush rising high on his cheeks that’s almost as distracting as his eyes.

Din wonders if he should say something, explain why he’s here, but in the end there’s really no need. The man’s gaze falls to the plant tucked under Din’s arm, and he makes a slight noise of dismay, and Din _knows_ he’s come to the right place.

“What happened to _this_ little one?” the man asks, his voice concerned as Din makes his way up to the counter and transfers the potted plant to the sturdy stone surface.

“It belonged to a coworker,” Din says, though he feels a _little_ guilty about it, because even if Cara’s gone and “rescued” it, the plant still belongs to Mythrol. Maybe Din can find a way to nudge it back towards health and then sneak it back into Accounting, though he supposes Accounting is kind of what happened to it in the first place. “Is there anything I can do to fix it?”

The man tilts his head and turns the plant in the golden light of the shop, which is lined with shelf after shelf of flowers—an absolute chaos of colour, from lemon to mauve, that somehow manages to look systematic. The line of his chin draws Din’s eyes to the embossed nametag that sits near his collar of his simple black shirt, a simple but elegant _Luke_.

The man—Luke—turns to pull a bag of something from a shelf behind him, and then he’s transferring something that looks a lot like dirt into the little ceramic pot, leveling it up a bit closer to the top. “So where did the attempted murder take place?” he asks offhandedly.

“What?” Din asks, and when Luke gestures at the plant, he feels a little hot under the collar of his white dress shirt. “Oh,” he says quickly by way of cover. “I, uh, work at Outer Rim Security.” And then, because there’s no reason to besmirch the entire company, he nods at the plant and says, “This guy’s from Accounting.”

Luke makes a thoughtful noise as his fingers continue to work nimbly. “You guys do some work for my sister Leia,” he says, but before Din can fully process that he must be talking about _Senator Leia Organa_ , because they have only _one_ client who goes by that name, Luke is very carefully giving him instructions on how to care for the plant—things about sunlight and water and an assurance that draecana is actually pretty hard to kill.

When he’s done, Din’s not quite sure what to do. It doesn’t seem fair that he’s taken up so much of Luke’s time when he surely has other things to do, so carefully and with great purpose, as if it’s something he’s been looking to buy for a long time, Din plucks a tiny trowel from a rack beside the till and sets it down on the counter.

Luke rings him up for $19.99, and when he hands over the trowel in a small paper bag with the Desert Blooms logo on the front, he presses a business card from the little holder beside him into Din’s hand as well. “I’m Luke, the owner. Call or come by any time if you have questions.” He shakes his head, and grins sheepishly as he tosses strands of sunlight out of his eyes. “My sister complains that I practically live here anyway, so I’m usually around.”

“Thanks,” Din says, though it doesn’t feel like enough. It would probably be a little weird to hand over one of his own business cards, since Luke hasn’t said anything about being in need of a security detail, so instead he settles for just offering his name. “Din. That’s me, I mean.”

“It was nice to meet you both,” Luke says, and his eyes crease in a way that speaks of sincerity. He gently brushes a finger against one of the plant’s little curled leaves, as if he’s saying goodbye, and Din is completely and utterly charmed.

Of course, he’s been completely and utterly charmed since the moment he’d walked into the shop, but it’s not like anyone but Din’s really counting.

When Din gets back to his office, he looks at the plant intently and tries not to think about the crisp blue of Luke’s eyes or the sunshine of his hair. He can’t take the plant home—Grogu is going through a stage where he’ll eat almost anything he sees, even if it’s very much not _meant_ for eating—so he places it gently on the long windowsill behind his desk. There seems to be more than enough sunlight, but after he’s watered it and followed Luke’s other instructions, he opens the window just a crack.

Who knows. Maybe the plant will appreciate some more fresh air.

\---

That afternoon, Cara takes one look at his face as she leans against the frame of his door, and crosses her arms suspiciously over her chest. “You’re in a surprisingly good mood.” He looks up and raises one eyebrow, because he has no idea what she means, and she points at him triumphantly. “See? You didn’t even glare at me.”

“You must not have been looking hard enough,” he says wryly, sitting back in his chair. He’s been reviewing blueprints and schematics for his next assignment for the past hour, and he’s just about ready to call it a day.

Cara shoots him a faux-wounded look until her eyes slide to the plant behind him. “Hey, looks like it’s settling in. I knew you’d be able to fix it,” she says. “It looks better already.”

Din shifts a little uncomfortably, because he’s honestly half sure he’s going to accidentally kill the thing. “The owner of Desert Blooms gave me some help,” he says, turning to glance at the plant. Cara’s right that it _does_ look a little better, but that’s probably only a trick of the light. “He said it should pull through with some care.”

“Huh,” Cara says, eyes narrowed as she watches his face. He’s not sure what she’s looking for, much less what she finds, but her speculative look is more than a little disconcerting.

Probably he should be afraid.

\---

The next day around midmorning, Cara plops another plant down on his desk, unceremonious but gentle, as if she doesn’t want to damage it any further than it’s already been damaged.

“I rescued it from Karga,” she says before leaving, with no remorse for apparently stealing their boss’s office plant. To be fair, she’s probably done the plant a favour; Din’s not sure what’s wrong with it, but it definitely looks like it’s on its last legs.

 _Last shoots, more like_ , he thinks sardonically, and then shakes his head at himself. He reaches out to touch one of the leaves, as he’d seen Luke do with the draecana the day before, and then stops himself. He’s a little afraid that the slightest disturbance will make it fall off.

He thinks about just following the instructions Luke gave him yesterday, but Din doesn’t know enough about plants to know which ones might need different care. So on his lunch break, he does the only thing he can really do: he scoops up his newest charge and heads back to Desert Blooms.

The way Luke’s lips turn up in a smile when he walks through the door, spontaneous and unguarded, makes something flutter in Din’s gut. He feels the urge to shift from foot to foot, but he forces himself to walk calmly to the till and set the plant on the counter.

“Another coworker?” Luke asks knowingly, and Din shrugs his agreement. Luke’s cheeks a little flushed again, and Din determinedly focuses on his eyes instead.

Not that that’s a better choice, all things considered.

“I didn’t know if it needs to be taken care of differently than the other one,” is all Din says, but Luke nods sagely and lifts the plant gently to get a better look.

“Good thinking,” Luke says, his eyes earnest and approving and _so damn blue_. They're blue like the sky right before dusk, like the deep blue of ocean in summer, and Din prays that the heat he feels on his face is only in his imagination. “Adiantum’s a lot more fussy about sunlight. It’s not the easiest plant, but I know you’ll do just fine.”

Luke begins rattling off a list of instructions, just like last time, everything from the type of water adiantum prefers to the right amount of light, but he’s carefully jotting down notes on the backs of business cards as he goes. When he hands them over to Din, five or six cards at least, he looks like he wants to say something else, too.

But in the end, Luke just smiles and says, “Let me know anytime if you need help.” He says it honestly, but not in a way that makes Din think he doesn’t trust him with the plant’s welfare, and Din feels an odd flipping sensation in his stomach.

Somehow, he thinks that should be more frightening than the speculative look on Cara’s face.

\---

From then on out, Din’s office becomes what basically amounts to a home for neglected office plants. His windowsill is full, which is a pretty mean feat, considering the thing stretches the length of the room. He’s been careful not to crowd it _too_ much—Luke says it’s good to give them some space—but there’s nearly a dozen, by now, each with a little stack of business cards in front of it that say _Desert Blooms_ on one side and contain Luke’s messy, handwritten instructions for care on the other.

The adiantum is growing merrily on the corner of Din’s desk, where it gets just the right amount of sunlight to thrive.

At this point, Din’s pretty sure that Cara is going out to buy sickly plants specifically so she can drop them on him, because there’s no way that so many of their co-workers own half-dead greenery. But for all that he should probably put his foot down, he finds he can never turn the plants away.

And he’s not about to refuse an opportunity to see Luke.

Luke always asks how the other plants are doing, and Din takes to swiping through pictures on his phone when he’s there, photos that show steady growth and recovery and a variety of flourishing colours. Their heads lean together over the screen, so close that Din can feel the brush of Luke’s hair against his own, and Din struggles to hear a thing Luke says over the pounding of blood in his ears.

The first time Din accidentally swipes through to a photo of Grogu, from a Sunday afternoon at the park the day before, he hesitates for a moment, unsure if he should put his phone away. He loves to talk about his kid, but he doesn’t know if Luke will want to hear it.

But Luke reaches out to brush the cuff of his sleeve, fingers hovering there above Din’s wrist, and Din spends the last twenty minutes of his lunch break going through photos of his son while Luke smiles brilliantly beside him.

If he’s a few minutes late getting back to Outer Rim, the warm glow in his chest is more than worth it.

\---

“Where did your coworker even get this?” Luke asks in confusion one day, about three months into their acquaintance, his eyes alight on the delicate spray of petals. “Blue orchids are pretty rare.”

Din shrugs, because he tries not to think about where Cara gets any of the plants these days. She’d simply put it down on his desk that morning, given him a knowing wink, and taken off on a three-day assignment.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get it back to health,” Luke promises. He says it in a voice that’s determined and sure and a little conspiratorial, as if it’s him and Din against the plant-killers of the world, and Din is willing to admit that he might be a _little_ bit in love.

Once Luke’s finished assessing the damage and writing out his instructions, the business cards safely tucked away in Din’s pocket, Luke clears his throat and gives Din a careful look.

“There’s a garden show this weekend at Coruscant Farms,” Luke says slowly. “If you’re interested, I could show you around.” He presses his hands firmly against the counter, and Din realizes very suddenly that Luke is trying not to fidget nervously. “And they have, you know, a pretty good coffee shop there too.”

As Din looks at Luke’s face, eyes blue as the orchid that sits between them, he has a distinct feeling he’s going to need to say _thank you_ to Cara.

Maybe he can buy her some flowers from Desert Blooms.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate summary: In which Luke tries to give Din his number about a billion times via business card.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I'm [treescape](https://treescape.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if you ever want to come say hi!


End file.
